EXPO CENTER PLAN SHOULD BE A SPUR TO ACT

The shows feature recreational vehicles or boats that cost more than my house, as well as flowers, fishing poles or faucets. For two decades, they've been held at the Civic Center.

That is changing. A new facility, Aero Center, has opened in East Hartford and snagged a few trade shows from the Civic Center.

Now a group of developers wants to build an exposition center, the Connecticut Expo Center, in the BJ's Wholesale Club building in the North Meadows. The idea, supported by Hartford's Redevelopment Agency, has drawn fire from Civic Center merchants, who think they'll lose business.

Yes or no, the expo proposal could be the boot in the patoot city and state officials have needed to make some decisions about the future of the Civic Center, the Whalers and downtown itself.

For at least a decade, promoters have complained the Civic Center couldn't accommodate all the trade shows and conventions that wanted to come to town.

In 1989, the state created the Connecticut Convention Center Authority to build a $150 million convention center in the city. Unfortunately, the hack-laden authority did more bickering than building. By 1992, it had spent $1.3 million without a spade touching the earth. Gov. Lowell Weicker taped the cookie jar shut.

However, the authority is still limping along, collecting some of Hartford's hotel tax, and passing it along to support the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

"We shouldn't be in the pass- through business. We need some guidance from the governor and the legislature," said long-suffering authority Chairman E. Clayton Gengras Jr. Others say the same thing.

Taken by itself, the Connecticut Expo proposal has much to recommend it. It's in the city, it will pay taxes, it's being done with private money. It offers 100,000 square feet, a third again larger than the Civic Center's Exhibition Hall.

"The industry is screaming for it. We need a space big enough to operate out of. We've outgrown the Civic Center," said George Gonsalves of North East Promotions, a Wethersfield trade show producer.

Also, with Phil Schonberger and Alan Lazowski, Expo has a first-rate local development team.

The danger is leaving the Civic Center in the lurch. Downtown would be awfully quiet without it. Expo proponents say more conventions would take trade show dates.

Well, maybe. Scott Phelps of the Convention and Visitors Bureau said that "a case can be made that more conventions will use the Civic Center if more dates are available." But he also said it will take more than dates, it will take "some subsidizing," of the Civic Center either by the bureau, the city or the state to make things work if Expo is built.

Don't count on subsidies from the state, which, via the Connecticut Development Authority, currently leases and runs the Civic Center. The state doesn't like the idea of losing trade shows to the Expo. Nor is it thrilled with the idea of subsidizing the conventions that would replace it.

"I see it being detrimental to the Civic Center and activity in downtown," said the authority's senior Vice President Antone Botelho. Civic Center Manager Harold Bannon called Expo "a Band-Aid approach" in trying to solve a need for more convention space.

Ideally, there would be a new facility, but it would be downtown. The Meadows is a mile away, but it's a long mile. Downtown has received only marginal benefit from the Meadows Music Theatre. Gov. John, Speaker Tom and Mayor Mike (and maybe, for a change, the planning department) need to make some decisions. Will the Civic Center be for hockey, or do we retrofit it for something else? Is the football stadium a fantasy? Should we be trying to bring light manufacturing into the Meadows, not make it another entertainment center?

There's a window of at least a few months before BJ's closes. If officials don't get off the schneid, don't blame Expo for being a success.